Cooking Around

A couple Friday's ago Cory was brave enough to accept the challenge of cooking me dinner. He is a self expressed non-cooker. When he cooks for himself he leans towards take out, frozen dinners or other simple to heat up meals. Of course I don't mind this since it gives me more reasons to cook when he's around. Especially since it's much easier to cook for two people instead of one.

Now on top of my challenge for him to cook, he had challenged me to make him lemon meringue pie. Well actually, my Mother mentioned to him how good I was at making it and he yelled "Prove it!" at me from across the dinner table. So I told him if he cooked me dinner I would provide dessert.

The chosen dinner was a chicken stir fry, and a wise choice in my opinion. Fairly straightforward, not too difficult or labour intensive, especially if you buy pre-cut fresh veggies.

It also happens to be a fairly well rounded meal. All in all the dinner was very yummy and earns an A. Naturally I don't let my personal bias towards the chef cloud my judgement or grading.



Now on to dessert! I took a slightly lazy route with the lemon meringue pie. Actually I ended up making tarts, which are no less delicious but more practical for transport. Not to mention that I happened to have a small batch of frozen lemon curd I had made a while ago in my freezer that wouldn't have filled an entire pie shell. So tarts it is!



Speaking of lemon curd. This leftover batch I used was (if I can remember correctly) from an Ina Garten recipe for lemon raspberry tarts I had made a while ago (but didn't survive long enough to be photographed or blogged about).

Lemon Curd
adapted from Ina Garten Recipe

• Zest & Juice of 4 lemons
• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter; room temperature
• 4 large eggs
• 1/8 tsp salt

In a food processor, pulse zest and sugar until until zest is broken down and mixture is
combined.

Cream butter with lemon sugar. Add eggs one at a time, stirring after each until combined.

Add lemon juice and salt. Mix.

Heat mixture in a saucepan on low heat until it reaches 175 degrees

Take mixture off heat and spoon into tart shells, pie crust, or freeze for later use.



I will leave you with this picture of my soldier fighting in the trenches of the kitchen.